Paper short abstract:

Presenting the creation, content, and potential of a digital archive of letters, meeting minutes, drawings and other documents, relating to the Icelandic culture-creating Evening Society (1861–1874), its members, and—in particular—one of its co-founders, the artist Sigurður Guðmundsson (1833–1874).

Paper long abstract:

We will present a digital archive relating to the artist Sigurður (“Siggi”) Guðmundsson (1833-1874) and the “Evening Society” (Kvöldfélagið) that operated in Reykjavík from 1861 to 1874. The secretive society of young intellectuals was instrumental in the creation of culture in Iceland and its influence and efforts still resonate in Icelandic society today.

The digital archive was created as part of a seven-year-long wide-ranging research project into the activities of Sigurður and the Evening Society and contains hundreds of transcriptions, images of letters, documents, and meeting-minutes that shed light on the personal lives of those involved, along with the inner workings, history, and development of the Society itself.

We will describe the work that went into the archive´s creation, point to particularly significant elements, and show examples of findings the digitization of the archive afforded. Finally, we will outline and demonstrate the potential this re-activation archive presents for further work and international collaborations.